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A few weeks ago I went to give an all day presentation in Nine Shift territory - - Aurora, Illinois.

Walk around downtown Aurora and you see all of the Nine Shifts taking place - - here, now. There are 12 passenger trains a day (yes, 12!). There are apartments downtown with only 5-10% vacancy. The downtown is being rennovated, alive, vibrant.

And Waubonsee Community College has a campus right downtown in the middle of it, a building in exactly the right location for the 21st century. So before I gave my all-day presentation for President Sobek and her top 37 administrators, I wondered whether they knew already all these changes, since they were seeing them every day.

The answer, as my co-author Julie Coates predicted, was no. They did not fully understand the Nine Shift changes. No 'bad' on them, it's just the way it happens. 100 years ago Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street about the transition from the Agrarian Age to the Industrial Age and it came out in 1921, immediately after it all happened. Everyone reading the book had just experienced this transition - - and yet they needed Main Street to give them the full picture.

August 9, night of the local recall. We lose big. GOP spends $30 million on just one rural senate district race. Yet the energy and spirit at the "losing" headquarters is so positive, you get the sense we won.

August 10, day after the recalls of Republicans. Major depression. We took away two Republican Senate seats, but missed by one on reclaiming a Democratic majority to block Walker's extreme right wing/ Tea Party agenda.

August 16, night of the recalls of Democrats. We win! GOP gets 0, nothing. Even in conservative up north, where our cabin is surrounded by posters for the Tea Party woman who compares teachers to Nazis, the Democrat still wins.

One week, one month later: We win 2, GOP loses 2, we lose 0. If a single moderate Republican switches sides on a Tea Party proposal, it is blocked. Walker now talks about talking with Dems. Local people talk about recalling Walker. Recall Walker bumper stickers now start appearing. Bottom line: Rome wasn't rebuilt in a day. The struggle over the 21st century keeps going. Photo: the volunteer office is packed, energy high, even losing that night.

Over a weekend, on vacation, or just taking a day (or hour) off, can you get away from email?

This was the first vacation where I felt I had to check my work email hourly, and found it hard to take a mental and online break.

I was hoping for a second computer, one where I could just have fun and not have to see work email constantly. Photo: No need to pity me, I had a great vacation, taking 4-5 swims in the lake on warm days. So many wildflowers on the path from the cabin to the lake, the flowers often would stick in my swim shoes.

How do you get offline breaks? Can you get away from email? Tell us your thoughts.

To be sure, those with just a high school degree will stay behind, begging for factory jobs. But the best of the college educated crowd is already thinking about moving abroad.

I was talking with a woman from Baraboo, Wisconsin. She has a son aged 23. Willie is age 24. So I started to tell her what Willie replied when I asked him "How many of your friends have thought about living abroad?"

Having a Gen Yer herself, the woman interrupted and correctly and exactly gave me Willie's response, "All of them."

The irony of the top subway expert in the world leaving America: subway traffic is growing.

A week before The New York Times reported that top light rail chief Jay H. Walder has bolted for Hong Kong, where they will value his talents, NYT did a story saying that New York subways are handling record weekend riders.

"You would probably have to go back to close to World War II," when people were working six days a week, to find such high weekend ridership, William M. Wheeler, director of planning for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told NYT.

The reason for all these weekend subway riders? Nine Shift. That's right. NYT points to changing work habits, population patterens and generational attitudes that "have helped turn the subway into the default mode of transportation any time of day."

Translated: Gen Y is moving into dense neighborhoods near light rail/subways, working from home, and not driving. If you don't work from home, let me just explain: when you work from home, not just 8-5 gets dumped, but 'weekdays' and 'weekends' do too. So people work, travel, and play more consistently throughout the day/night and week.

Do you want your daughter to work in a factory? Every economist wants to bring back manufacturing, but none say they want their daughter to work in a factory for $13 an hour. Do you?

The U.S. and Canada cannot, and should not, bring back factories. Factory workers have recently been downgraded from $28 an hour to $13 an hour pay. And they have less job security, more unemployment. And of course they have less education than knowledge workers.

The real worker shortage and need is for knowledge workers, who will make around $100,000 a year, be in high demand, and possess a four year college degree. That's where the jobs are, even now in 2011. By 2017 we will have a shortage of knowledge workers of 14 million, says Anthony Carnevale.

Photo: The real Rosie the Riveter was Geraldine Hoff Doyle. She passed away this year. She only worked for two weeks in a factory during World War II because she saw another girl get injured on the job, and left the factory scene herself.

Feminism has just entered a new phase, pitting second stage feminists (a la Betty Friedan) versus third stage feminists (a la Gloria Steinem). The new phase is marked by advances for women. But it raises new questions about responsibility.

For example, Dr. Karen S. Sibert, writing in the NY Times, raised the issue of whether doctors who complete their education with taxpayer support have a moral obligation not to work part time, given the growing shortage of doctors. OnPoint did this show on it. Tell us your opinion.

Now here's how to tell if you are a Second or Third Stage Feminist.

Second Stage. Betty Friedan was one of the last Second Stage feminists. She believed women were equal to, but not superior, to men. She abhored Gloria Steinem's admonition to raise boys like girls. Friedan was a mother of three boys. Many if not most Gen Y and Gen X women are second stage feminists.

Third Stage. Adherents of Gloria Steinem's belief that any gender difference is due to male discrimination, not neurology. Believe that "boys should be raised like girls" (this is a direct quote from Steinem). Believe that female traits are superior to male traits. Third stage feminists are mostly in the Baby Boomer generation. We were Third Stage feminists and parents until we discovered the research on gender.